She held out her hand. “You comin’?”

I was torn. I wanted to sit at her feet like this forever, but I also wanted to have the conversation that we’d been trying to have all day. Knowing where that conversation could lead, I took Darcy’s proffered hand, and she led me inside.

The house was so quiet that it felt like someone had packed my ears with cotton. All of my senses were focused on Darcy. The sticky sound of her wet feet on the hardwood floors. The rustling leaves of the houseplants as our shoulders brushed against them in the closeness of the dark hallway. The way the door stuck and then jogged back when she twisted the knob, swollen and warped from years in the damp Charleston humidity. It was both real and unreal, yet I was in it, feeling every sensual detail.

“I’m just going to jump in the shower and rinse off the chlorine,” she said, turning to me in the middle of the room. “But there’s a little bar over there next to the piazza doors. Make yourself a drink, and I’ll be right out.”

While Darcy showered and put on another of her silky robes, I made both of us a drink. When she finished up in the shower, she joined me out on the piazza, and we sat on a patio set hidden behind a curtain of ivy. With the citronella candles lit and the pillows and cushions arranged just so, it was clear that she had set up this space for us to talk before I got here. The cozy seclusion enveloped us and sent a frisson of excitement across my skin. We’d sat out here together many a night. Back then, she would sit at the far end of the couch, as far away from me as she could be without sitting on another piece of furniture altogether. As the night progressed and the conversation became more intimate, she’d inch closer and closer until we were cuddled up at one end. Not tonight, though. Tonight, she sat right next to me. Close enough for me to see that her eyelashes were still wet and tangled. Close enough to smell her expensive perfumed soap mixed with the harsh chemical smell of chlorine.

“So, how did it go? Did you have any fun?”

“Not really. I was just a glorified chaperone with a Black Card. I barely drank tonight.”

“Hm.” She raised her glass to take a drink, and I did the same. I took a deep swallow that I hoped would calm, if not completely drown my nervousness.